Once–until, oh, a year or so ago–the left used to insist that dissent was patriotic. Now that they are in power, they are indignant at the discovery that their power is not absolute. What a strange and insular bunch they are.

October 22, 2009

I haven’t commented on the Doug Hoffman/Dede Scozzafava race in New York because (1) I’m not anywhere near there, (2) it hasn’t had a lot to do with the main topic of this blog, and (3) “GOP establishment pushes incompetent leftist/moderate over solid conservative” is sort of a dog-bites-man story these days.

Don’t take this to the bank, at least not yet. But somebody who seems to be in a position to know what’s coming down the pike in New York’s special election tells me that he’s hearing Sarah Palin will publicly endorse Conservative Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava.

Palin, at least, seems to understand the problem with the GOP is not that it’s not leftist enough. Does any other national figure?

October 16, 2009

Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.

October 12, 2009

Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential Republican candidate, on Wednesday sought to link the dollar decline to rising US indebtedness and dependence on foreign oil. “We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

…

“The dollar has always been a testosterone issue among America’s political classes,” said Norm Ornstein, a veteran analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

“This time there may be a legitimate debate to be had over the dollar’s reserve status, but Sarah Palin is not qualified to participate in it.”

The AEI may be nominally conservative, but Ornstein certainly is not. He’s best known for either skits on leftist “comedy” shows (Stewart, Colbert, Franken) or for drafting parts of McCain-Feingold. Neither were as entertaining as he apparently thinks.

Of course, what’s really funny is that Ornstein’s not qualified to have a voice in an economic discussion, either, by his standard. He’s no economist; he’s a political scientist.

What Ornstein is saying is that those of us without advanced degrees from Ivy League institutions should sit down, shut up, and open our wallets while our betters tend to everything. How’s that worked so far, Normy?